Mania, delirium, frenzy, hysteria are comparable when they mean a state of mind in which there is loss of control over emotional, nervous, or mental processes.
Mania (see also INSANITY ) definitely implies madness or insanity; the term may designate a type of madness in which the patient manifests extreme excitability or, more precisely, the phase of manic-depressive insanity in which the patient loses control over his powers of thought, of speech, and of movement through violent excitement or excessive emotion.
Delirium implies extreme mental disturbance that may be associated with or induced by toxic factors (as of disease or drugs) or occur episodically in a prolonged mental disorder and that is characterized by raving, hallucinations, delusions, and extreme restlessness.
But delirium also, in nontechnical use, applies to a state of intense emotional excitement that manifests itself in an individual or in a group and robs him or them of self-control.
Frenzy (see also INSPIRATION ) suggests wilder or more violent agitation or disorder than delirium but no less emotional excitement; it is applicable both to a state bordering on a mania and to one in which for the time being all self-control is lost.
Hysteria applies strictly to a psychoneurosis simulating organic disease and manifesting such symptoms as disturbance of sensation, motion, and visceral functions expressed typically in functional paralysis, nausea, and emotional excitability.
In ordinary nontechnical language hysteria implies extreme emotional instability that may show itself in swift transitions of mood or from laughing to crying.